Cherchez les Oirlandais

In which we show the seamless web of Oirish connections underlying so many different f*ck-ups. We've already argued that the EU Constitution was doomed from the moment it emerged from the blizzard of smugness that was the Irish Republic's tenure with the EU Presidency a year ago.

Consider another legacy of that era. As part of Bertie Ahern's compromise that saw the host of the Iraq War Council summit get elevated to the Presidency of the European Commission in Brussels, Bertie was able to land the premium job of Internal Markets Commissioner for his then Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy, a likely pretender to his throne that Bertie was keen to move sideways. In fact this period of strategery was a sign that France's influence was already waning within the EU, because Chirac could only get the boring Transport portfolio for the French Commissioner. When you're being out-manouevered by Bertie Ahern, you should know there's a problem.

Anyway, part of McCreevy's new job is to ensure that governments aren't meddling too much in the location of private industry within the EU. As we noted before, in this capacity he met with the current Irish finance minister to discuss the status of horse-related tax breaks that he had presided over to benefit his buddy John Magnier -- one of the duo who sold their stake in Man Utd to Tampa Bay Bucs owner Malcolm Glazer. So don't you see how the antics of these cronies have global geopolitical implications?

But we're barely started. There was another pet McCreevy tax break -- a dodge giving big income tax deductions for investments in private nursing homes (.pdf). So if unlike Magnier's Man Utd partner JP McManus, you're a rich person actually choosing to pay tax in Ireland, just park a bunch of your income in a nursing home, and your tax rate goes way down. This is typical Irish government policy -- never do anything direct like provide health care or build a road when you can rig the tax system to the benefit of your cronies who'll do it much more indirectly and expensively.

Anyway, the predictable consequence of a tax dodge in nursing homes was a flood of investors building them but a shortage of people to operate them, leading to the scandal exposed by a RTE undercover team of shoddy care for the elderly at a home in north Dublin. As noted by the blog GUBU a couple of days ago, Ireland's permanent party of government, Fianna Fail, has a remarkable ability to sound like someone else has been running the country all these years. So the ministers from Bertie on down are demanding investigations and regulators and all the stuff that, like, the government is supposed to do. Such as ensure that migrant workers are getting their duly earned wages.

As it happens, when we Googled to get some information about these tax breaks, the first link that came up was from the Irish operation of the Bank of Scotland promoting nursing homes as a good business investment:

Tax Driven Partnerships
Over the past few years, the pool of investment opportunities governed by tax breaks has been growing smaller. Nursing home investments remain one of the few opportunities.

Which is all innocuous enough until, with our set of obsessions, you make the link: Bank of Scotland (Ireland) -- chairman was Bertie crony Phil Flynn, until he got linked to an IRA money laundering investigation and quietly dropped his many high profile positions in the public and private sector. Phil had particular problems explaining why he went on a business trip to Bulgaria with some dodgy associates, but argued that as an impending EU member Bulgaria had some good investment opportunities. How nice for Phil then that his pal Bertie was moving the enlargement process along as President of the EU Council of Ministers.

One final thought (we promise). The Original Cronies Magnier and McManus have indeed gotten out of soccer with the sale to Glazer. But perhaps seeing the lucrative nature of the industry in the Republic, they are now ploughing cash into British nursing homes. Our advice to our British readers -- before putting Granny in that seemingly nice nursing home, be sure to do some research on any potential Oirish ownership hovering in the background.

UPDATE 3 JUNE: Friday's Irish Times (subs. req'd) reports:

Charlie McCreevy is to take on new responsibilities within the European Commission, deciding all competition cases that the competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, cannot handle because of conflicts of interest.

The logic being that unlike Kroes, McCreevy has never been remunerated by a firm that he might be investigating. But given his own conflict of interest on Irish tax cases, has he swapped those with Kroes? We doubt it.

2nd UPDATE 7 JUNE: A followup on the Magnier-McManus nursing home consortium, Barchester. It's the lead bidder for the group that owns the Priory Clinic in Roehampton -- a very different establishment than Leas Cross.